They certainly fought British troops in Madagascar.Battle of Madagascar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia My Grandad was one of the RWF who fought there as was a Great Uncle, who years later very ungraciously told a French dignitary to shove his Croix De Guerre up his arse for surrenedering in 1940.

As a preliminary to the main event the 11th (Scottish) Commando were to launch a sea-borne attack. Their objective - to capture and hold a vital bridge over the Litani, a Lebanese river 16 miles from the Palestine border. On June 7th 1941 John Mackay, William Campbell and David Gunn were leaning over the side of the 'Glengyle', watching Cyprus disappear over the wide blue horizon. Flanking the assault craft were three cruisers and eight destroyers of the 15th Cruiser Squadron. With a force such as this, what else could tomorrow's Lebanese landing be but a summer's day picnic?

From the outset things went wrong. The 15th Cruiser Squadron ran into unexpected guests - the Vichy Navy, a formidable fighting force. A drawn out game of cat and mouse ensued, finally ending when the Vichy warships turned tail and withdrew. A success, but a success purchased at the cost of surprise; the Commando's scheduled 0400 landing of June 8th had to be put back 24 hours. At 0500 next morning, the Commandos steeled their nerves and psyched themselves up in readiness to land on the north bank of the Litani. It was broad daylight and the Vichy French were waiting in overwhelming strength. A wry smile passed over John Mackay's face. Today was his 19th birthday. What presents lay in store for him he wondered?

Commando casualties commenced even before the troops got ashore. Vichy artillery and heavy machine guns opened fire with deadly accuracy, killing many Commandos as they charged forward through the Mediterranean surf. By using every trick learned during months of hard training, the Commandos eventually made it to dry land. Now the going really got tough.

A force of Australians was due to rendezvous with them that very day; the Commandos task was to seize the Litani bridge and hold it until the Aussies arrived. This they duly did, only to lose the bridge later to a determined Vichy counterattack. Low on ammunition, the Commandos struggled on desperately against superior numbers, fighting on with captured Vichy guns in a vain attempt to hold on to the bridge. It was all to no avail. Despite universal heroics, the Vichy troops recaptured the bridge. The Australian reinforcements arrived just in time to see the coveted structure crumble into the Litani, dynamited by Vichy engineers. Tomorrow, however, was another day. On 10th June 1941 the combined force of Commandos and Australians captured what was left of the Litani River crossing. Soon pontoon bridges were thrown across the water and the Vichy were in full retreat.

Exhausted by some of the most violent combat any of them had ever engaged in, the Commandos took stock of their situation. Of their number, 125 had been killed, among them William Campbell, late of Janetstown by Thurso, a Caithness boy who had willingly responded to his country's call. Now he had paid the final reckoning. William was buried in a lonely roadside cemetery near to a Lebanese river, a far cry from the cold, fresh northern county of his birth.

Earlier this year I holidayed in Lyon which was in the middle of Vichy France. They have a museum of The Resistance and Deportation. The Museum does not pull any punches and points out that the Vichy Government started deporting Jews before the Germans asked them to. It also highlights the bravery of some Catholic priests but rips the Church apart for the co-operation they gave to the Vichy / Germans.

A very interesting Museum and well worth a visit, as long as you remember that France did not win the war alone!

Earlier this year I holidayed in Lyon which was in the middle of Vichy France. They have a museum of The Resistance and Deportation. The Museum does not pull any punches and points out that the Vichy Government started deporting Jews before the Germans asked them to. It also highlights the bravery of some Catholic priests but rips the Church apart for the co-operation they gave to the Vichy / Germans.

A very interesting Museum and well worth a visit, as long as you remember that France did not win the war alone!

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"The attack upon the martyr town of Oradour-sur-Glane in the Haute-Vienne Department of France, on Saturday the 10th of June 1944. This atrocity was carried out by soldiers of the Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich" - and when I got there myself, and read the original documents, I found a substantial number of Der Fuhrer Regiment were in fact Vichy French soldiers looking for 'action'. MK

I recall reading that France's colonies split with some backing de Gaulle and others Petain. One motive for sticking with Vichy seems to have been that most French felt hugely let down by the previous government and Petain, as hero of Verdun, promised to restore some sort of national pride and make the best of the ruin.

One thing that I hadn't seen before - heard it in an interview on the new MI6 history - was that the French intelligence services didn't tell the Germans that France (and Poland) had made huge strides towards cracking Enigma and that they'd shared this info with the UK: so maybe not everybody who stayed behind changed sides

and when I got there myself, and read the original documents, I found a substantial number of Der Fuhrer Regiment were in fact Vichy French soldiers looking for 'action'. MK

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Splitting hairs: Most were Alsatians, pressed into service. There were French volunteers that fought for the Germans but then Danes, Belgians and Dutch also volunteered if their politics matched the Nazi ideology.

The whole subject of Vichy, or general collaboration, is extremely complex. It's probably not much different to the way ancient Britons 'collaborated' with the Romans, or the way that the Saxons came to accept Norman rule.

A cracking read. Describes how badly the French treated British prisoners. When the Vichjy were defeated one of the prisoners went back and stabbed the Vichy Commander in charge of the POW cage to death.

There was also the work the French did in tipping off the Germans about convoys to Malta. Pedestal was first spotted by a Vichy airliner and they immediately signalled the position and strength of the convoy to the Germans.

I have this discussion with my (French) wife on an occasional basis. It is, indeed, a very complicated issue - it is one thing, with the benefit of hindsight, to condemn the French for the high levels of collaboration that went on, but one must rememember that by the end of 1942, Germany was in command of an area of land from the channel, through the Mediteranean, to deep inside Russia. At that time, it would have seemed inconceivable that the mighty Germans would have been defeated and many people sought to make accomodation with the conquerors as best they could.

Whilst the French like to make out that 'everyone was in the resistance' the truth is that the vast majority of French people just wanted to get on with their lives and not be bothered. For a great part of the occupation, the resistance was seen as a bunch of (mainly communist) hotheads who would stir up trouble in an area, piss off the Germans, disappear, and leave the locals to carry the can.

What is true is that (not only in France) divide and rule was the order of the day - the Gestapo never numbered more than 30,000, the SD were never greater than 5,000. The Germans could never have controlled an empire that size without the willing and enthusiastic support of the locals. You have to ask yourselves if it would have been any different over here had things gone differently in 1940 - there are always those who would collaborate for what they see as their own advantage and there were not a few in Britain in the 1930s that admired Hitler and thought that he was right.

If you read Roald Dahl's excellent autobiography, you will be struck by his hatred for the Vichy in the Lebanon; his best friend, who had survived with Dahl the desperate days of flying Hurricanes against overwhelming Luftwaffe numbers in Greece, was shot down and killed by the French.

Target of the largest bombing raid launched by the French air force in WW2? Gibraltar, 1940. Though to be fair they were understandably very very angry over what we had just done at Mers le Kebir.

"The attack upon the martyr town of Oradour-sur-Glane in the Haute-Vienne Department of France, on Saturday the 10th of June 1944. This atrocity was carried out by soldiers of the Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich" - and when I got there myself, and read the original documents, I found a substantial number of Der Fuhrer Regiment were in fact Vichy French soldiers looking for 'action'. MK

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The Vichy army, the so-called Armee de l'Armistice, had been disbanded by the Germans (except for one ceremonial regt) when they occupied southern France in November 1942. Before that it had numbered only 100 000.